29 December 2013

2013 did not
disappoint when it came to indie animation fare. Due to the vagaries of short film
distribution, to qualify for this list films either had to be released in Japan
in 2013 or be a 2012 Japanese release that screened at European festivals in
2013. There are so many talented
animators working in Japan at the moment that it was nigh on impossible for me to narrow my
list down to just 10, but I somehow managed a short list of 15. Without further ado, here are my screening highlights from the past year ordered randomly.

Kick-Heart (Yuasa Masaaki, 2013)

I am a
long-time fan of Yuasa Masaaki (Mind Game,
Tatami Galaxy), travellingto Dortmund in 2011 to see him at the
Japan Media Arts Festival (read
about his film talk there), so I was delighted to be able to put my money
where my mouth is and support him in his latest project Kick-Heart.It is, indeed, a
kick-ass film and I hope to review my copy of the Blu-ray/DVD set soon. Kudos to Production I.G. for going the extra mile for innovative animation.

Combustible (火要鎮/ Hi no Yōjin, 2012)

This short
film by legendary manga-ka and animator Katsuhiro
Otomo (Akira, Memories) won the Animation Grand Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival
2012 and then went on to win the Noburō Ōfuji Award at the 2012 Mainichi
Concours. Combustible is an adaptation of Otomo’s 1994 one-shot manga of the
same name and is set during the time of the great fires in Edo. This
film appears as part of the anthology anime Short
Peace (ショート・ピース, 2013) alongside animated shorts by Shuhei Morita, Hiraki Ando and Hajime
Katoki. I will be reviewing Short Peace when the Blu-ray is released
mid-January 2014. Although Otomo isn't exactly "indie", one can't argue that he takes risks with his animation, going beyond the mainstream in his choice of subject matter and style of animation.

Futon (布団, 2012)

This minimalist short by Yoriko Mizushiri explores
the sensual aspects of being sleepily wrapped up in a warm duvet. It won
a number of prizes in Japan including the prestigious Renzo Kinoshita Prize at Hiroshima
and the New Face Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival. It has also been a big
hit at international festivals, making the short list for Cartoon Brew’s most
well liked animated short of 2013.
It appears on the new DVD/Blu-ray L'Animation
Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1.
Mizushiri’s most recent film, Snow
Hut (かまくら, 2013), made the Jury Selection at this year’s Japan
Media Arts Festival.

Ninja and Soldier (2012)

Experimental
animator Isamu Hirabayashi has followed
up the success of his animated short 663114
(2011) with another computer animation, Ninja
and Soldier. The central characters,
two eight-year-old boys, are drawn in a child-like crayon scrawl on an elegant
background straight out of traditional Japanese art. The film explores human nature through the
eyes of children. Ninja and Soldier screened at the 2013 Berlinale and at Image Forum
Festival 2013.

Recruit Rhapsody (就活狂想曲, 2012)

It was hard
to choose my favourites from among the strong works from Geidai animation grads,
but Maho Yoshida’s clever depiction
of the annual Shūkatsu Kyōsōkyoku job
hunt certainly tops my list of Geidai faves.
Read
my review here.

Red Colored Bridge (2012)

In his
characteristic brightly coloured style, the renowned pop artist Keiichi Tanaami uses the symbolic red
bridge to heaven found in traditional Japanese gardens to take us on a
psychedelic, erotic, and spiritual journey into his imagination. This film can be found on L'Animation
Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1.

Maze (2012)

With their
latest film TOCHKA (Takeshi Nagata and Kazue Monno) have come up with yet another innovative new way to
showcase their PiKA PiKA animation: on a grid pattern of 12x4 squares. A team of assistants with different coloured
lights act like pixilated Bunraku performers colouring in and around the blocks
with light. This film required
meticulous planning and choreography. My favourite moment is the Pac-Man
inspired sequence where a yellow arrow and a couple of stars negotiate a
maze. This film can be found on the recently
released DVD/Blu-ray L'Animation
Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1.

Columbos (Kawai + Okamura, 2012)

Hiroki Okamura and Takumi Kawai, better known as
Kawai + Okamura (カワイオカムラ), are a creative duo who both teach at
the Kyoto University of Art and Design. Columbos is a reimagining of the
legendary television detective Columbo
with puppets. It is a unique puppet
animation unlike anything I have ever seen before with unbelievable use of
lighting, special effects, and choreography of figures. This film appears on the new DVD/Blu-ray L'Animation
Indépendante Japonaise, Volume 1.

While the Crow Weeps (カラスの涙, 2013)

Sukimaki Animation (Makiko Sukikara and Kohei Matsumura) were awarded the New Face
Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival for their atmospheric short While the Crow Weeps. This
hauntingly beautiful depiction of crows is like an Edgar Allan Poe poem come to
life.

Airy Me (2013)

Dream-pop
singer Cuushe
(have a listen on soundcloud) has
some of the coolest tie-in art and videos around and Airy
Me is my current favourite. Animated
by Yoko Kuno, the same artist who designed
the cover art for Cuushe’s latest album Butterfly
Case, the music video takes us on a dizzying journey into psychosis. Watch it
for yourself on Vimeo.

Anomalies (Atsushi Wada, 2013)

Award-winning
CALF animator Atsushi Wada’s latest
film was funded by Animate Projects, the UK’s “only
arts charity in the UK dedicated to championing experiments in animation” via
its online exhibition space and screenings on Channel 4’s Random Acts. Anomalies is part of the group commission
Secret
Monsters. Drawn in Wada’s characteristic
style, Anomalies has a faster pace
than his earlier films but long-time Wada fans will recognize the characters and
themes. Watch it
here.

Yamasuki Yamazaki (やますき、やまざき, 2013)

A joyous
celebration of the female form, Shishi
Yamazaki’s Yamasuki Yamazaki is a
sensual delight. Inspired by female
curves, cherry blossoms, and the music of Jean Kluger and Daniel Vangarde (father of Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter), it is the only film I have ever seen that succeeds
in making the act of defecation look almost lovely. Watch for yourself on Vimeo.

Little Ojisan (aka Mini Oyajiちいさなおじさん, 2012-present)

This minimalist short-short animated series was adapted by Noi
Asano from his manga series The Diary
of Little Ojisan (ちいさいおやじ日記 / Chiisai
Oyaji Nikki, 2008-present) and airs on Chiba TV. The series stars a Tom Thumb-esque character
in the form of a middle-aged businessman. His adventures begin when a young girl finds
him under a leaf on a rainy day and adopts him.
The comic vignettes play on the absurd role reversal of the
mini-businessman and the girl. Odd but
strangely engaging, I like the simplicity of the pencil on white drawings. Sample episodes can be found on Little Ojisan’s official Youtube
Channel.

Wonder (ワンダー, 2013)

I gave CALF
animator Mirai Mizue my financial support when he crowdfunded the completion of
Wonder, a short film that developed
out of his Wonder 365 Animation Project
(Mirai Mizue, 2012-13).The film is now
complete and heading out to festivals.The
film has already been given a Special Jury mention at the Japan
Media Arts Festival, and I expect it will do well on the festival circuit in
2014.

A Wind Egg (空の卵, 2012)

Ryo Ōkawara is another Geidai animation
programme graduate whose work is improving with each new film. His deeply disturbing but captivating short A Wind Egg won the Lotte Reiniger
Promotion Award for Animated Film at the Stuttgart Trickfilm Festival in 2013. Read my
review here.

2013 was a
wonderful year for feature-length animation in Japan. Studio
Ghibli released new films from their great masters Hayao Miyazaki and Isao
Takahata. The Wind
Rises (風立ちぬ, 2013) gave Miyazaki a chance to indulge in his love
of aviation and Shōwa nostalgia, while Takahata has adapted the much-loved
folktale “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter” in his first feature film in over a
decade, The Tale of Princess Kaguya (かぐや姫の物語, 2013).

The usual
franchise suspects did well at the Japanese box office this year with Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant
Sea (2013) becoming the Conan franchise’s highest grossing film ever. Crayon Shin-chan starred in his 21st
feature film: Crayon Shin-chan: Very
Tasty! B-class Gourmet Survival (2013) and did well at the box office, as
did Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget
Museum (2013). Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods (2013) shot to number one at the box
office showing at all 16 of Japan’s IMAX Digital Theaters. Variety
also reported that the film ranked number 5 overseas, making it the
top-ranking non-Hollywood film on the chart. Yasuhiro
Yoshiura’s Patema Inverted (サカサマのパテマ, 2013) and Hideaki
Anno’s Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not)
Redo (ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版：Q) received the Excellence Award at the Japan
Media Arts Festival 2013, while Ghost in
the Shell Arise - Border 1: Ghost Pain (2013), Blue Exorcist (青の祓魔師2012), and Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day (2013) all got special mentions.

As I do not
live in Japan, J-films usually come to a screen near me via festivals the
following year. This year, I was particularly lucky that Nippon Connection
2013 had a strong programme of
animation. I was delighted to finally
see legendary animator Gisaburo Sugii’s
Kenji Miyazawa-inspired The Life of Budori Gusuko (グスコーブドリの伝記, 2012) on the big screen featuring the same Hiroshi Masumura anthropomorphic cat
characters that he used in his earlier classic Night on the Galactic Railroad (銀河鉄道の夜,
1985). One of the most under-rated
animated feature films of 2012, The Life
of Budori Gusuko has a timely environmental message, likely inspired by Kenji
Miyazawa’s love for the countryside of his native Iwate Prefecture.

Also at Nippon Connection, Mamoru Hosoda’s bittersweet tale Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪, 2012). After successful stints at Toei (Digimon Adventure, One Piece) and Madhouse (Girl
Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars),
Hosoda has entered a new stage in his career by establishing his own studio: Studio Chizu. Thematically, the film has much in common with
Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko (平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, 1994) except instead of a species under threat
of human development, the central characters are a species who are extinct in
Japan – the Honshū wolf – and have only managed to survive into the modern era by
becoming half human.

Nippon Connection also presented a collection of Toho animated shorts
under the title Kami Usagi Ropé: The Last
Day of Summer Vacation (映画「紙兎ロぺ」つか、夏休みラスイチってマジっすか!?, 2012), a retrospective
of Sci-Fi Anime (1966-2011) and Hiroyuki
Okiura’s well-received 2011 film A
Letter to Momo (ももへの手紙 / Momo e no
tegami). However, the most
innovative films on the programme were Keiichi
Sato’s disturbing tale of the feral child Asura (アシュラ, 2012), which you can read about here, and Uchija’s grotesque The Burning Buddha Man (燃える仏像人間, 2012) – which actually is not
really an animation but an elaborate puppet film using highly detailed cut-outs. There was also an excellent selection of shorts
from Geidai university – a couple of which made my Best JapaneseIndie Animation Shorts of 2013.

I had been
concerned from early on in his career that Makoto Shinkai might
buckle under the unnecessary pressure of people calling him the “new Miyazaki” –
unnecessary because I think his style of animation is very different from the
man he admires. The Garden of Words (言の葉の庭, 2013), which I picked up the
day it was released on DVD/Blu-ray in Canada in August, is a lovely 45-minute
film that explores a May-December romance between a young man from a broken
home and an older woman he meets at the park.
The highlight of the film for me is the scenery which is based on
photographs of Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden – natsukashii!

A heavy
teaching schedule meant that I did not get into any anime series this year, but
there are enough anime bloggers out there to cover this genre. Check out the lists by haruhichan, kotaku, lostinanime,
not to mention a terrific overview of the whole cultural year in Japan by Néojaponism.

This
delightful early anime is the first animated short by Toei Dōga (now known as Toei Animation) Most of the animators who worked on the film –
Taiji Yabushita, Yasuji Mori, Akira Daikubara, et al. – had previously worked at the
animation studio Nichidō (Nihon Dōga-sha/日本動画株式会社, 1948-56) which was acquired by
Toei in 1956. Although Yabushita, the
co-founder of Nichidō, is the director of Kitty's
Graffiti (こねこのらくがき/Koneko no
Rakugaki, 1957), the character design and general look of the 13-minute
animation often gets attributed to Yasuji Mori.

Shot on
black-and-white film stock, and the film has no dialogue – much in the style of
a Tom and Jerry cartoon – and like Tom and Jerry, there is a cat chasing
mouse gag, but it is executed in an entirely different manner. A kitten is busy scribbling pictures on a
bare external wall of a house. His line
drawings are images typically drawn by a child: a horse in the sun, fish and a
crab blowing bubbles, a cat mother and kitten, a streetcar, traffic, a horse
and carriage, and a train on a long railway track with a tunnel at the
end. At the sound of a whistle blowing,
the drawing of a train comes to life and starts to rumble down the track. The kitty stops the train then notices a
terrible traffic jam of cars pushing and shoving each other on the portion of wall
where he had randomly drawn an assortment of vehicles. He quickly draws in a traffic police bear to
direct the cars more safely.

Pleased with
his results, the cat smiles as he observes the scene then turns upon hearing a
smattering of applause behind him. There
he discovers a pair of mice who are equally pleased with the kitty’s
drawings. One of the mice is tall and
slender and dressed slacks, the other is small and round dressed only in a long-sleeved
shirt. The shorter of the two mice stands
on a tin of fish to get a better view.
For his audience, Kitty draws a parade of mouse figures on the wall. The mice celebrate by jumping up and down
causing the little one to lose his balance and clatter into hiding with the tin
attached to his tale. A large bear,
presumably the owner of the house, peers around the corner and admonishes kitty
for defacing the wall. He is given a
bucket and cloth to clean up the mess, but he gets distracted by the laughing
mice who take Kitty’s pencil and board the train and take off with it. Kitty chases after them and jumps aboard and they
enter the tunnel and are transported into a wonderfully imaginative cat chasing
mice sequence through a land of child-like drawings. The chase continues with many delightful
slapstick moments until the mice turn the tables around and start chasing the
cat instead. It is all just a bit of fun
and ends with the cat doing what is right and cleaning up after himself. . . leaving only the drawing of the police bear as
a reminder of the day’s events.

This type of
cartoon that enters the imaginative world of children, and actively encourages
children to think creatively beyond the realms of the “real” is my favourite. It transported me back the one of the
cartoons of my childhood such as Simon in the
Land of Chalk Drawings (Ivor Wood, ITV, 1976), which aired on TVO when I
was as kid. I much prefer these kinds of
absurdist jaunts through the realms of the imaginary to didactic / moralistic
tales for children. They seek not only
to entertain children, but encourage them to pick up their pencils and
entertain themselves after the film has concluded. The enjoyment of the film is
elevated by Senji Itō’s playful score. Itō is best known in film studies for his
dramatic scores for the films of Yasujirō
Ozu (The Only Son, The Brothers and
Sisters of the Toda Family, Late Spring, A Hen in the Wind, Early Summer) and
Hiroshi Shimizu (The Masseurs and a Woman, Four Seasons of Children,
Children of the Beehive, Notes of an Itinerant Performer, A Star Athlete,
etc.). Here his music drives the tempo
of the animation (lilting, marching) with interruptions timed to heighten the comedic
moments. The score is so expressive that one hardly notices the lack of actual dialogue.

The central
characters in Kitty's Graffiti (the
cat, the bear homeowner, the mice duo) are beautifully realized, with round,
expressive faces – much like the animal characters of Disney’s Bambi. The kitty has some design similarities to the
kittens of Kenzō Masaoka’s Tora-chan
films – on which Mori also worked. However,
that being said, these are only minor similarities and the kitty is certainly recognizable
as a distinct character with its own cheeky personality. This
film gives us a glimpse of what wonderful cartoon shorts Taiji Yabushita, Yasuji
Mori, Akira Daikuhara and co. could have made if they had had a Disney budget.Kitty's Graffiti is a film treasure that
serves as a testament to the great skill in particular of Yasuji Mori, who is
remembered as a mentor to many animators who learned their craft in the 60s and
70s, from Hayao Miyazaki to Gisaburo Sugii. Mori
is revered by those he mentored not only for his skills as an animator but for
his incomparable character design. Books
of his art can be ordered
from Anido.

20 December 2013

Most pre-war
Japanese animation is derived from Japanese fairy tales and mythologies. However,
the origins of the story behind Yasuji
Murata’s animated folktale adaptation Why
is the Sea Water Salty? (海の水はなぜからい/ Umi no Mizu wa Naze
Karai, 1935) are very complicated. Long
before science could explain why oceans are salty,
myths and legends were developed to fill the knowledge gap. Murata’s film seems to have been influenced
by a tangled web of European and Japanese folktales.

This
retelling by one of the great pioneers of anime appears on Disc 3 of Digital Meme’s Japanese Anime Classic Collection 4 DVD Box Set. The film has not been
digitally remastered and shows the wear and tear of time: flecks, scratches,
and even small tears. It begins in the
typical manner of a Japanese folk tale with “Mukashi mukashi. . .” (Once upon a time. . .). As Why is the Sea Water Salty? is a silent
film, the text appears on title cards and the Digital Meme features the added
bonus of narration by benshi Midori
Sawato and soft background music.

Plot Summary

Two brothers,
one rich and one poor, are introduced on title cards. New Year’s is approaching and the younger
brother is lacking supplies. He goes to
ask his older brother for help. He finds
him pounding mochi (glutinous rice).
The older brother looks down on the younger one and dismisses his request
saying that his younger brother is undeserving of his rice cakes. Disappointed, the younger brother heads home with
his head hanging low. Along the way, he encounters an elderly man
who almost falls off a footbridge. He
rescues the man and to thank him for his kindness, the elderly man gives him
some manjū (sweet bean cakes). He tells him that he should take the manjū to the dwarves in the forest to
exchange for their quern (stone mill/ 臼 /usu).

Led by a
dwarf waving a hinomaru flag enthusiastically,
the dwarves are hard at work in the forest building a house. However, they run into troubles dragging the
heavy wood uphill. The younger brother
laughs are their dilemma and offers to help them. They offer him a meal in thanks but the
younger brother shows them his manjū. The dwarves begin salivating at the sight of
the sweet manjū and beg him to share
them. They even offer him money for the manjū and he refuses, asking instead for
their quern. After some discussion, they
agree to this deal and they explain the secret of how to use the magic
quern. When he turns it right and makes
a wish, what he wishes for appears. To
reverse the magic he must turn it to the left.

The younger
brother wishes himself a house, a warehouse, and rice fields, and before long
his wealth exceeds all the others in his village including his older
brother. The older brother is
overwhelmed by jealousy and asks his younger brother if he can borrow the
quern. The younger brother says it would
be useless to the older brother because he is already a wealthy man. So the older brother steals the quern and
leaves the village by sea. As he double-checks
that he has brought everything he needs, the older brother notices that he forgot
to bring salt with him. He then uses the
quern for the first time and wishes for salt.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to tell the quern to stop and the
growing pile of salt causes the boat to sink.
The older brother is eaten by a shark and the quern falls to the bottom
of the sea where it continues to dispense salt into the ocean for
eternity.

Discussion

Chūzō Aoji (青地忠三,
1885-1970) wrote the screenplay for Why
is the Sea Water Salty? Aoji worked
with Murata (村田安司, 1896-1966) at Yokohama
Cinema Shokai where they collaborated on many animated shorts in the 20s
and 30s such as Taro’s Toy Train (太郎さんの汽車,
1929) and Momotaro of the Sea (海の桃太郎, 1932). Although
versions of this folktale have been recorded in many counties (see: D.L. Ashliman’s Folktexts for some examples),
the origins of the tale adapted by Aoji and Murata appears to have roots in both
Norway and Japan.

The Norwegian
folktale “The Mill That Grinds at the Bottom of the Sea” (Kvernen som maler på havsens bunn) is one of the most well-known
salt folktales. It was first published by 19th century folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe in Norwegian Folktales (Norske Folkeeventyr) which appeared in
various formats starting with a slim pamphlet in 1852. The tale was translated into English by Sir George Webbe Dasent and can be
found in his 1888 publication Popular
Tales from the Norse (Project
Gutenberg) under the title: “Why the Sea is Salt” (sic). It is believed that this tale likely found
its way to Japan in the late Meiji or early Taishō period, sometime after its
publication in English. There has also
been some evidence that in Taishō 12 (1923), a similar story to the Norwegian
one was brought to Japan by people who arrived by boat from Russia (Source). The Norwegian tale is set on Christmas Eve,
but the Japanese version changes this to Oshōgatsu
(Japanese New Year), as this was (and remains) the most important holiday in
Japan.

Another
major difference between the Norwegian tale and the Japanese is the addition of
dwarves. In the Norwegian tale, the old
man gives the brother the quern and there is no bartering with dwarves. The dwarf element is likely derived from a similar
story may have already existed in Japan before the arrival of the Norwegian
tale. According to the Japanese
folklorist Misako Kobayashi (小林美佐子), most Japanese tales about dwarves like “Why the Sea
is Salty” (臼を交換し海の水の塩辛いわけ) originate in the Tohoku region. Other such dwarf tales include “The Year’s End”
(年の暮れ) “Tabemono no
Mushin shi” (食べ物を無心し), “Ōzei no Kodomo ” (大勢の小人)
and “Manjū-nado” (饅頭等). (Source)

Animation Style

Stylistically,
Murata has gone with cut-out animation. This was common practice in pre-war Japanese
anime because it saved money for both in materials (celluloid was expensive)
and labour (moving cut-outs is faster than drawing successive images). The cut-out technique used is fairly straight-forward. The animator has used as few set-ups as
possible, with mostly establishing shots and medium-long shots being used. Interestingly, Murata chooses to shoot
dialogues in two separate spaces linked by a pan rather than having the
characters occupy the same frame. I don’t
really see any aesthetic benefit from this so can only presume that this was
done in order to simplify the animation process. In the sequence that narrates about the
wealth the younger brother acquired with the magic quern, I had the impression
that the quern might have been done using stop motion of a real quern. The other interesting stylistic note is the
edit that introduces the dwarf forest.
It is a fan-shaped wipe opening from the top the screen – and matches to
the use of a fan by one of the dwarves in the scene that follows.

On the
whole, the film itself is a straight-forward retelling of a story that has a
complicated oral history. In terms of
originality, for me the best scenes are the one where the dwarves are trying to
get the wood up the hill, and the final scene when the sea creatures are
startled by the arrival of the quern at the sea bottom.

The French
indie label Les Films du Paradoxe, who have a terrific catalogue of
animation DVDs from Te Wei to Paul Driessen, have collaborated with CaRTe
bLaNChe to release a combination DVD/Blu-Ray of Japanese independent
animated shorts made between 2006 and 2012.
The selection features a wide range of experimental techniques from
drawn animation to pixilation.

The
selection opens with two films by Shin
Hashimoto (橋本新, b. 1978) of CALF, an up-and-coming Tama Art University graduate who has become
known for the dark, atmospheric nature of his works. Beluga
(ベルーガ, 2011) is a nightmarish take on the story of the
little match girl which, won a special mention at Zagreb 2012. This is followed by his earlier film The Undertaker and the Dog (葬儀屋と犬/Sougiya to Inu,
2010), a deeply disturbing yet beautifully painted film that was widely praised
by critics when it screened at international festivals.

The unique aesthetic
of experimental filmmaker Isamu
Hirabayashi (平林勇, b.1972) became known to a wider audience in 2011/12
when his animated short 663114 (2011)
received high honours from being invited to the Biennale in Venice to winning
the Noburo
Ofuji Award. As I wrote in my
review of the film last year, it is one of the most profound responses to Tohoku
disaster, and it is worth buying this selection just to see it on Blu-ray.

Hiroki Okamura (岡村寛生, b.
1968) and Takumi Kawai (川合匠, b. 1968), better known as Kawai + Okamura (カワイオカムラ, since 1993), are a creative
duo who both teach at the Kyoto University of Art and Design. As students at Kyoto City University, Okamura
majored in oil painting and Kawai in sculptor, but today they are best known
for their innovative films and installations that combine a number of different
techniques from CGI to stop motion. Columbos (コロンボス,
2012) is a reimagining of the legendary television detective Columbo with puppets. It is a unique puppet animation unlike
anything I have ever seen before with unbelievable use of lighting, special
effects, and choreography of figures.

Acclaimed CALF
animator, Mirai Mizue (水江未来, b. 1981), has contributed two of his recent films Tatamp (2011) and Modern No. 2 (2011). Tatamp is an example of Mizue’s
distinctive “cell animation” style that feature a chorus of little amoeba-like,
colourful cells whose movements and shapes are inextricable from the soundtrack
(read
my full review). Modern No. 2 is an example of Mizue’s experiments
with geometric animation. Learn more
about this style of animation in my post The
Modern Films of Mirai Mizue.

Yoriko Mizushiri (水尻自子,
1984) is a graduate of the Joshibi University of Art and Design in
Kanagawa. Her trademark animation style is
to focus on individual parts of the body from an original perspective. Her 2012 animated short Futon (布団) won a number of prizes in Japan including the prestigious
Renzo Kinoshita Prize at Hiroshima and the New Face Award at the Japan Media
Arts Festival. It has also been a big hit at international festivals, making
the short list for Cartoon Brew’s most
well liked animated short of 2013. The
second film of hers featured on this DVD, Kappo
(かっぽ, 2006), demonstrates that Mizushiri established her
unique style early on in her career.

Another CALF
animator, Kei Oyama (大山慶,
1978), also features on this DVD. His fleshy,
disturbing, yet strangely poignant film Hand
Soap (ハンドルソープ, 2008) won prizes at Oberhausen, Holland, and
Hiroshima. Read my
review here. The
animation community is anxiously awaiting the release of his latest work After School, which crowdsourced funding on Camp-fire
in 2012. He’s taking a risk by trying
out a totally new style – can’t wait to see the results.

Dreams (2011) is the last collaborative
film by long-time friends and colleagues Keiichi
Tanaami (田名網敬一, b.1933) and Nobuhiro
Aihara (相原信洋, 1944-2011). Up
until Aihara’s
sudden death in 2011, the two well-established artists made 15 films together
in just over a decade – many of which can be found on the 2011 Chalet Pointu/CaRTe
bLaNChe/ARTE DVD Portrait
of Keiichi Tanaami. The films came
out of the fact that both artists were teaching at Kyoto University of Art and
Design. The collaborative process
consisted of one of the artists drawing a picture for a scene and leaving it on
the other’s desk. The other artist would
add to it or remove some parts and put it on the first artist’s desk, and so on
back and forth until the film developed.
This kind of artistic “correspondence” was unique in the art world and
it is a mesmeric experience to watch their complementary styles on screen
together. Dreams is followed by the prolific Tanaami’s latest offering: Red-Colored Bridge (2012). In his characteristic brightly coloured style,
Tanaami uses the symbolic red bridge to heaven found in traditional Japanese
gardens to take us on a psychedelic, erotic, and spiritual journey into his
imagination.

There are
few animators today who truly embody the creative spirit of my favourite
animator, Norman McLaren, and TOCHKA (トーチカ,
since 1998) is one of them. TOCHKA is
the husband-wife animation team Takeshi
Nagata (ナガタタケシ, b.1978) and Kazue
Monno (モンノカヅエ, b.1978) who are known for their innovative PiKA
PiKA light animation films (read
more about them and learn how you can order a DVD of their works). This DVD features their original 2006 film PiKA PiKA and their latest film MAZE (2012). In MAZE,
Nagata and Monno have come up with yet another innovative new way to showcase
their PiKA PiKA animation: on a grid pattern of 12x4 squares. A team of assistants with different coloured
lights act like pixilated Bunraku performers colouring in and around the blocks
with light. This film required
meticulous planning and choreography. My favourite moment is the Pac-Man inspired
sequence where a yellow arrow and a couple of stars negotiate a maze.

The DVD/Blu-ray
concludes with two recent films by acclaimed CALF animator Atsushi Wada (和田淳, 1980). The
Great Rabbit (グレートラビット, 2012) is Wada’s most successful film to date
winning him the Silver Bear at the 62nd Berlinale among other
honours – read my
review here. And finally, as
I wrote in 2010, I consider The
Mechanism of Spring (春のしくみ, 2010) to be “Wada’s most
light-hearted film to date, capturing the delight that young children and
animals take in the season. The young chubby boys examine the wildlife, take
off their shirts and run about gaily, and observe a plant sprouting out of the
earth, among other delights.” I like
that they chose to end the DVD with this uplifting film.

On the
whole, this is a terrific selection of recent independent animation from Japan
--- the best collection since Image Forum’s Thinking
and Drawing: Japanese Art Animation in the New Millennium (2005) and Tokyo Loop
(2006). The greatest thing about this DVD/Blu-ray is that it is called Volume
1, suggesting that we can expect more DVDs in the future. It has French and English subtitles and can be ordered via Amazon France. For those of you in Tokyo, Koji Yamamura’s new animation museum/shop
Au Praxinoscope in Setagaya has the
film on their list.

16 December 2013

The final
year of university in Japan is quite fraught because of a tradition known as Shūkatsu Kyōsōkyoku: an intense
recruiting process by corporations keen to scoop up the top graduates.The pressure to find a job upon graduation is
much greater in Japan than anywhere else I have lived because there is a
general consensus that if you don’t get hired straight out of college, you will
have spoiled your chances for climbing the corporate ladder and may find
yourself becoming a freeter (underemployed/freelancer).

Another
major difference that I noticed between Canada and Japan in particular was that
whereas Canadian companies highly value creativity, individuality, and a “go-getter”
attitude in new recruits, in Japan the emphasis is much more on academic
performance and the recruit’s ability to fit in with the corporate
identity. It’s more than just the “team
player” mentality promoted by many Canadian corporations because you are having
to demonstrate that you are prepared to obsequiously toe the line of corporate
hierarchy. Up-and-coming young animator Maho
Yoshida (吉田まほ, b.1986) depicts this recruitment process beautifully
in her graduate film for Tokyo University of the Arts (Geidai)’s animation
programme: Recruit Rhapsody (就活狂想曲/Shūkatsu
Kyōsōkyoku, 2012).

A young modern
woman – who we find out in the end credits is the animator herself – is fiddling
on her smartphone during a lecture. She
is so preoccupied with her smartphone that she doesn’t notice her friends
checking their watches. As they leave
the building together, her friends check their watches again and turn their
backs on the bubbly young woman. Before
her incredulous eyes, the woman’s friends transform from unique individuals
into wannabe office workers in suits.
There is a wonderful moment in which they strike poses against a yellow background
as if they are about to break into a dance number from West Side Story.

The young
woman reluctantly sheds her long blonde hair, make-up, and colourful clothes
for a dowdy corporate look and rushes off to join the crowds of recruits trying
to get onto the corporate ladder. They
slither into a job fair like a festival dragon and applaud the corporate recruiters
and bow their heads in a manner reminiscent of a totalitarian regime cowing the
masses. It is a terrific animated short,
which any job hunter can identify with: from the companies overselling their
images to the phoneys vying for the same job as you to the interminably long
hours waiting by your smartphone for that job offer that never comes. We all recognize that feeling of selling your
soul to the devil just to get your foot in the door.

What
transforms this film from great to pure genius is the use of music. Composed by Yukiko Yoden from Geidai’s music programme, the music is reminded
me of George Geshwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924) in its spirit
and liveliness. . . and
of course, in its use of piano with an ensemble. Kudos to Shizuka
Shimoyama on piano, Makiko Umchara
on violin and Saeko Tominaga on
violoncello for their engaging performances. Maho Yoshida has clearly composed
her images with the intended music in mind for the movement and music work very
much in harmony with each other. It
never ceases to amaze me how the graduates of the Geidai programme have attained
such a high level of skill at such a young age:
Yoshida’s scene transitions and changes in perspective are innovative and
beautifully done.

The film was
produced by Kōji Yamamura and it made
the Jury Selection in the Animation Division of the 2012 Japan Media Arts
Festival and has appeared at other festivals. I saw the film as part of the
Geidai screening at Nippon Connection 2013. You can see a lower resolution
release of the film (no subs - but they are not really needed) on Youtube --- be sure to wait until after the
end credits to catch the true end of the film.
It became a viral hit when it came online and I suspect that every
spring when the recruitment season heats up loads of young recruits will be
sharing this video again.

12 December 2013

Floating Sun (幻日, 2013)
is a bit of a departure for Tokyo-based Malaysian director Edmund Yeo into the horror genre.
This short film is his contribution to Hungry Ghost Festival: 3 Doors of Horrors (鬼節:三重門, 2013), a 45-minute horror omnibus film produced by prolific
Malaysian filmmaker James Lee for his
indie production company Doghouse
73 Pictures. The film premiered on
Youtube on the 17th of August.
The omnibus, which was designed to showcase young Malaysian directors,
also includes Leroy Low’s I Miss You Two and Ng Ken Kin’s Horror Mission. This review is of the 20 minute
director’s cut of Floating Sun
considered independently of the omnibus as a standalone short film.

The plot of Floating Sun comes from a short story
by author and poet Kanai Mieko (金井美恵子, b. 1947).
According to Yeo’s blog Swifty, Writing,
he happened upon Mieko’s collection of short stories The Word Book at the Aoyama Book
Center in Roppongi. Her story “The
Moon” was the inspiration behind his beautiful short Last
Fragments of Winter (2011), while Floating
Sun is based on the story “The Boundary Line”, about the corpse of a woman
who drowned.

As with many
Edmund Yeo films, Floating Sun blurs
the lines between past and present, real and imagined. A young novelist, Fiona Yang (Emily Lim), is writing a story based
upon the unusual circumstances surrounding the death of her teenaged classmate
Chen Xiao Hui (Candy Lee) many years
ago. Chen Xiao Hui was found floating on her back in the river by a security
officer (Azman Hassan), and the
events continue to affect all those involved.
Since beginning to write the story, Fiona has been haunted by images of Chen
Xiao Hui’s corpse floating in the river.
A series of strange events also begin to disturb her and her young
daughter Teng (Regina Wong) in the apartment
that they share. The disquieting events
seem to be connected not only to the haunting presence of the spirit of Chen Xiao
Hui but also to possible guilt surrounding Fiona’s affair with married man Wai
Loon (Steve Yap) – but this
interpretation is my own as the circumstances are deliberately left vague.

It turns out
that Fiona was the last person to see Chen Xiao Hui alive, a fact that she
downplays as being unimportant because they were merely classmates not close
friends. A flashback reveals that Fiona
recalls sitting with Chen Xiao Hui at the river and saying: “Do you know, if
you look at the sun from underneath the water, it is as if the sun is
floating. It’s a lovely sight, but sad
at the same time.” These comments
suggest that Chen Xiao Hui’s death may have been an accident.

The location
for the river scenes really makes the film.
Chen Xiao Hui lies in the water as if being embraced by the root of a
giant tree. This tree was truly a great
find for the film for its numerous roots are not only poetically beautiful, but
add symbolic weight to the film: the roots behind the events in this vignette
are many, but Edmund Yeo leaves us only a few tantalizing clues and leaves it
to our imaginations to fill in the blanks. It’s an atmospheric and suspenseful tale that
leaves us wanting to know more about these characters.

You can
watch Floating Sun as part of the Hungry Ghost Festival: 3 Doors of Horrors
(鬼節:三重門, 2013) on Youtube.